Frequently, a software component that is provided for use by customers includes one or more problems. These problems can range from minor (e.g., functionality incorrectly and/or partially implemented) to severe (e.g., an application error or a stack overflow problem). However, due to the complexity of the software component and/or its interaction with a particular computer system, the cause of various problems is often difficult to identify, making these problems difficult to report, difficult to reproduce, difficult to correct, and/or the like. To this extent, managing these problems can be cumbersome for the customer and/or the software provider, resulting in an increased frustration for the customer, an increased cost for technical support, and the like.
To date, a software component that encounters a problem will typically display a user-friendly message to the user informing him/her of the problem and possibly requesting some action in response (e.g., terminate execution, inform software provider, and/or the like). However, in the software component, there may be numerous execution paths, only a small number of which may be problematic, which will result in the same message. As a result, the usefulness of such a message to the software provider is often limited.
In one approach, a computed hash value, which may be based on stack trace information, is used to determine whether an update package containing a bug fix exists. If so, the update package is retrieved and applied to the firmware/software of an electronic device. However, users generally do not wish to have updates and/or the like to be automatically performed on their computer systems. Further, this approach fails to provide a solution for identifying the problem for the user and/or reporting a problem for which an update package may or may not exist.
In view of the foregoing, there exists a need in the art to overcome one or more of the deficiencies indicated herein.